He shrugs. “I told you, I haven’t come this far yet. It’s only been a few weeks. The Ridge is massive, bigger than the Shallows.” He smiles. “I’d love to draw this.”
I walk along the edge of the ravine, closer to the peak. I look left, far away, and see movement in the trees. Hear that awful, horrible buzzing. A wave of black swarms through the trees, like a giant, moving shadow.
Biters.
“The swarm is heading toward that camp,” I say.
Koi bites his lip. “We should move. In case it changes directions. We don’t want to get caught up in that.”
I turn, take a few steps after him. We are almost out of view of the meadow, at least a mile or two away, when I hear the scream.
It’s undeniable. It echoes through the woods, across the field of flowers, up the ravine, finally ringing so loudly in my ears that I swear the voice is calling to my soul.
I know that scream. Its sound used to pull me from a dead sleep, so many countless nights back in the Shallows.
Koi and I whirl around to face each other.
And then in a flash, we are both sprinting as fast as we can, skirting around the edge of the ravine, tearing down the giant hill toward the meadow.
Because we both know who that scream came from.
Peri.
CHAPTER 98
ZEPHYR
T alan lies beside me in her tent back at the Reserve. Holding a pre-Fall book she bagged from the Library. How she got in there, I don’t know, but I never ask.
The book is flat. Thin, with faded images of Pirates. Not the kind of Pirates we have in the Shallows.
But they’re just as dirty, out for gold.
“It’s a treasure map,” Talan says. She traces her fingers across one of the pages. Shows me images, little hash marks along the way. “X marks the spot.” Her muddy fingers stop on the X.
I smile. “X marks the Ward, Talan.”
“You’re no fun.” She pouts. “For once, imagine you and me. Free. Following a treasure map to some amazing place. Think of all the food we’d have once we got there . . .”
My eyes open. The memory fades away. I look back at Tox, his carvings, his steady hands.
“Can I borrow that?” I ask. I won’t take it from him by force..
He nods, hands it gently over to me.
Sketch comes back, and together, we look down at the walking stick. I twist it in my hands, and suddenly all the images make sense.
It’s not the carvings of a crazed man with a lost mind.
They’re the carvings of someone who’s very, very sane. He’s just trapped beneath the surface. He can’t bring the words forth because they’re stuck.
So instead, he’s given us what he can.
“It looks like the map inside the New Militia’s place, doesn’t it?”
“Holy hell, Sketch. You’re right.” It’s like my eyes open wide, and finally, I can see.
I look past her, right into Tox’s eyes. “You’ve had the answer this whole time,” I say. I hold up the stick. “That’s what this is, right Tox? It leads to the Green.”
“Green,” he says, his smile showing through his wrinkles. “Yes.”
I look down at the walking stick.
But it’s much more than that. Because looking at it, I finally realize the reason why it’s stuck out so much to me. The New Militia had something very, very similar, sprawled across one of their walls. The same mountains, the same ocean. The same large piece of land, floating in the middle of it all, where Tox has an X instead.
The stick is a different format, but it means the same thing.
It’s a map. The same map the New Militia has.
And it leads to the Green.
CHAPTER 99
MEADOW
My feet cannot carry me fast enough.
My boots hit the meadow, crush the flowers with every step. I am soaring, flying, lost in the rush of being so close to her, after so long.
Koi is at my side the entire time. We’re a blur of silver in a world of yellow, and then green, as we hit the tree line and push forward.
There are screams, everywhere.
I can’t think.
The fire is just ahead, darkened by the swarm of Biters. Wood huts are scattered about the place, forgotten. There are ten, maybe twenty people, running away. I see a man waving a fiery stick, trying to fight the Biters off.
Hundreds of them swarm him. Women and children rush for the trees. People fall and are left behind, and the Biters dive down on them like predators to wounded prey.
“Where is she?” I scream. I’m whirling in circles, searching for her. “Peri!”
She was here.
I know she was here.
A Biter lunges at me, sticks itself into my arm. I cry out, slap it away, but the welt is already there, and the poison is spreading.
Will I go blind, like Zephyr?
I have to find her first. I have to see her.
“This way!” Koi grabs my hand, yanks me into the trees, after the group of people still fleeing. I wait for my vision to go spotty and dim, but it doesn’t come.
Instead I’m sprinting harder, and finally I see a figure up ahead, running fast.
Peri always ran fast. She loved to run on the sand and chase the gulls.
“There!” I scream. “She’s there!”
“Peri!” Koi yells, but she can’t hear us.
I sprint and leave him in my wake.
I am close to her, so close, enough that I can see her bald head, covered in cuts and bruises. Her Regulator is so large on her tiny body that I wonder how she stays standing, has the strength to carry on. Her arms are covered in giant purple bruises and mud, her clothing ripped to near shreds. Her cuff is a teal that reminds me of the ocean in springtime.
“Peri!” I yell, one final time, stretching out.
She doesn’t stop.
I leap. I wrap my arms around her, twist as we fall, so that she lands on top of me.
She screams, bites at my arms, claws with her fingernails.
The Biters dive at us. I flip around and push her flat against the ground, cover her body with mine. I can feel the hardness of her Regulator against my face. The Biters make impact. The pain is straight from my nightmares, piercing bite after bite into my skin. I cry out, beg myself not to move, so that they can’t get to Peri.
And then, suddenly, it stops. The Biters lift off. Their buzzes carry them away into the woods, after the others who escaped.
“Meadow!” Koi yells. I can hear his footsteps as he catches up.
Peri squirms beneath me, whining, trying to get away.
“Peri,” I gasp. “It’s okay, it’s me, it’s Meadow!”
Koi reaches us, hauls me off of her.
Peri scrambles backward, whirls to look at us. She lifts her arm, and she is holding a tiny, hand-carved blade, made from rock. It isn’t sharp enough to do any damage at all. Her hands shake, and her eyes are wild, like she is seeing a monster. Like she has seen too many horrors, all of the things we tried to keep her from for so many years, but we failed.
We failed.